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Purity
Purity was a name used by the Syndicate for an alien virus that thrived underground on Earth, in petroleum deposits. The virus, also known as black oil, was capable of entering humanoids and assuming control of their bodies. It had sentience and was capable of communicating. (TXF: "Piper Maru", "The Truth") History Early Human Contact In 35,000 B.C., two primitive humans pursued a set of strange tracks through the frozen wasteland that was North Texas. They followed the tracks into a cave, where they were attacked by the alien that had left the tracks. Although one of the men was killed, the other managed to injure the creature. However, a form of black oil poured out of the alien as it lay dormant on a rock. The substance covered the remaining man and painfully infected him. (The X-Files Movie) In 1945, a squadron of P-51 Mustang airplanes escorted a B-20 transporting a nuclear bomb similar to those used on Japan during World War II. However, the aircraft crashed in the Pacific Ocean after a hostile encounter with a UFO that also crashed. Later the same year, an American submarine named the Zeus Faber was deployed in an attempt to locate the crash site. The Zeus Faber found the sunken squadron but the submarine's crew also unknowningly brought the black oil aboard. The alien substance possessed the Zeus Faber's commanding officer, Captain Kyle Sanford, and manipulated him into refusing to return to port without offering an explanation. When the crew turned on the possessed captain and rendered him unconscious, the alien entity left the submarine and returned to the ocean. The Zeus Faber's crew complement had been 144 when it left port, but only seven survived the return journey to Pearl Harbor. The majority of the crew had died from radiation burns due to exposure to the possessed Captain Sanford, though none of the crew were ever given an explanation for the awful burns and the survivors never discovered a reason for their own survival. The incident was never revealed to the public. (TXF: "Piper Maru", "Apocrypha") The Piper Maru Incident In 1995, the UFO that had crashed with the squadron of US airplanes was recovered by an American salvage ship named the Talapus. (TXF: "Nisei") While the craft was secretly taken to San Diego and secured within a guarded warehouse there, the black oil remained within the Pacific Ocean. (TXF: "Nisei", "Piper Maru") In 1996, the French salvage ship Piper Maru was on a mission to locate the sunken squadron of airplanes when a diver, Bernard Gauthier, discovered one of the planes. The Piper Maru's crew had been monitoring Gauthier's progress when they lost all contact with him. Gauthier continued to inspect the plane and found that a pilot was bizzarely still alive inside, trapped in the cockpit and possessed by the black oil. By the time Gauthier returned to the surface of the water and was recovered by the Piper Maru, he had also been possessed by the alien substance. Gauthier claimed that he was unharmed and asked his crew mates to help him remove his diving suit. One man found a thin layer of oil that covered the diving suit but thought nothing sinister of it. Like the men aboard the Zeus Faber, the black oil also exposed the crew of the Piper Maru to extremely high levels of radiation. The ship slowly journied to San Diego, steered home by the possessed Gauthier - the only man not effected by the radiation. The French government classified the nature of the contaminant that had irradiated the Piper Maru's crew and refused to release that information. In fact, the US Navy inspected the Piper Maru but found nothing unusual nor any radiation aboard the vessel. The crew members suffering from the radiation were admitted to San Diego Naval Hospital but determining a course of treatment for their deteriorating condition was complicated by the secrecy regarding the incident. What could be determined was that the men had been exposed to an unnaturally high level of radiation, with a high rate of absorption. Symptoms included spontaneous internal bleeding in the mouths and intestinal tracts, blood in the urine and severe delirium - the pre-advanced stages of a coma. Though Gauthier had been held at the hospital for one day, he seemed to be in very good health and discharged himself the next morning. Gauthier, controlled by the black oil, returned to his home in San Francisco, California, where he lived with his wife, Joan. (TXF: "Piper Maru") Outbreak in America In late 1996, a diplomatic envoy from Russia landing in Hawaii was intercepted by security guards and searched for being beligerent with them. During the search, the guards discovered a canister containing what the envoy described as a biohazardous material. The guard dropped the canister, shattering it and releasing its contents: Purity. Another envoy carrying a sample of the same rock from Tunguska, Russia, arrived at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.. With the ironic assistance of Alex Krycek, Agents Mulder and Scully attempted to intercept the courier. However, he fled but dropped his diplomatic pouch that contained the mysterious rock. Krycek knew that the Syndicate would be looking for the rock, and he was eager to take revenge against the Cigarette Smoking Man. Krycek was then kept in Walter Skinner's apartment while Mulder and Scully tried to learn more about the rock. The CSM approached Skinner the following day demanding to know the whereabouts of the pouch, but Skinner was unable to answer because the agents hadn't revealed it to him. Scully took the rock to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to have it analyzed with Dr. Sacks. Sacks discovered that the rock was the same as meteorites, which prompted Mulder to travel to Tunguska in search of answers. Mulder and Krycek travled to Russia, where they discovered prisoners of a gulag mining for extraterrestrial rocks like the one they had intercepted. However, they were discovered and imprisoned. Betrayed by Krycek yet again, Mulder was then subjected to an experiment wherein he was exposed to the black oil. However, he surived unscathed because the Russians had developed an effective vaccine. Meanwhile, the Russians discovered the outbreak in the United States. Vassily Peskow was sent to take care of it. Ultimately, Peskow successfully covered up the presence of the black oil and destroyed much of it by blowing up an oil well in North Dakota. (TXF: "Tunguska", "Terma") Questionable Information A theory concocted by doctor and FBI Special Agent Dana Scully is that the black oil came to Earth prehistorically on a meteor from Mars that also carried the first building-blocks of life to Earth. The virus then thrived on Earth and infected primitive humans, completely changing their physiology and transforming them into alien life-forms themselves. In the planet's last ice age, these aliens died and the virus lay dormant underground until it resurfaced during Earth's current geologic period. The same theory states that, in 1947, a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The virus communicated with the UFOs, alerting the American government to its presence. Unfortunately, there is insufficient evidence to prove Scully's theory. (TXF: "The Truth") The UFO crash that apparently took place in Roswell is also unprovable, although there are historical reports of the alleged incident. (TXF: "Deep Throat") Hosts * Kyle Sanford * WWII Pilot * Bernard Gauthier * Joan Gauthier * Alex Krycek * Fox Mulder (cured) * Dana Scully (cured) Background Information Some fans of The X-Files have speculated that the original concept of the black oil may have been influenced by a parasitic worm that featured in the Season 1 episode "Ice". Although none of the production personnel who worked on the series have admitted or denied this possibility, the two concepts do share several similarities. In the episodes they are featured in, suggestions are made that both lifeforms came to Earth from space. They are also both seen to infect their hosts and manipulate their hosts' behaviors, creating a mood of paranoia. The second of four DVDs in The X-Files Mythology series is named "Black Oil" and includes several early episodes that feature the alien substance. Appearances & References * TXF: ** "Piper Maru" (Season 3) ** "Apocrypha" ** "Tunguska" (Season 4) ** "Terma" ** "Patient X" (Season 5) ** "The Red and the Black" * The X-Files Movie ** "The Beginning" (Season 6) ** "Two Fathers" ** "One Son" ** "Vienen" (Season 8) ** "The Truth" (Season 9) Category:Syndicate Category:Aliens Category:Aliens